


Batshit City

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, BDSM, Blood, F/F, Gen, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Infidelity, M/M, Play within a Play, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Screenplay/Script Format, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:29:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28840914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: You're writing a story about a haunted house.  These days, you don't seem to write anything else.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. The Sentimental Pleasures

**Author's Note:**

> It's my novel. Back by unpopular demand, t'is my novel, originally self-published in 2018 as "The Sentimental Pleasures", now serialized as "Batshit City". I did try to do this before- it must have been two years ago, and now, I'm trying again, without regard for the original order of the story, posting chapter willy nilly until either I post them all or I again become disgusted by my own tendency toward self-indulgence and pomposity.  
> This work is fiction. Any resemblance to any person or persons living or dead is coincidental. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

"The Red Velvet Rat"

Reconcile yourself to eternity.  
What do you mean, what part?  
The whole part, all of it. That’s what eternity is: the whole, entire thing, unbroken; only one thing, all the time.  
How does one do that?

Feel that motor.   
The road is rough and winding, cracked like old leather, stretched over the frame of an uneven haunch of land next to a canal. Driving over it feels like riding a bull. Lucky always thinks that, one day, he'll lose control of the car, fall off of the road, into the canal. Off of the face of the earth, perhaps- into some unimaginable blankness. The one thing that we can’t seem to imagine is nothing. He doesn't mind the fear. It’s measured. It's like pepper on his food. Like a small and suddenly unveiled fang of pain. It's an irritant, but it’s one that makes life more livable, somehow.   
If he’s alone, it’s all right. Then, he doesn’t mind the idea of dying. If he died alone, he wouldn’t owe anybody anything. He wouldn’t have to pretend to be brave, or pretend to be sad, or pretend to be scared, or pretend to care what anybody else thought about his death. Lucky’s last death was very public. With everyone watching him suffer, he began to feel as though he owed it to them to perform. Out of the hope, however drippy, that all of that weeping and screaming would get him something, more drugs, or at least a kind word, he began to feel like he owed it to himself. Logic dictates that if a human being hears a fellow creature cry out in pain, they’ll do something to alleviate that pain. Logic languishes and dies in the hospital, where pain is boss. He’ll never die in public again.  
Since he nearly died, Lucky's not supposed to drink. Even he can acknowledge that his continued drunkenness is in pretty poor taste. Though, he wasn't supposed to drink in the first place, and he really wasn’t supposed to get so sick that he’d had to stop. That had been in extremely poor taste. He wasn't supposed to grow up to be a man. He wasn't supposed to tattoo himself with the initials of dead musicians. He's not supposed to draw on his mustache outside of the house. He probably wasn’t supposed to let those tourists believe that he really was John Waters.  
From an early age, he knew that he was going to grow up to be Gal Gaines from the television show, Gaines Gals, even though the show didn’t even go on the air until Lucky was nineteen. That aside, it was a good plan, and all Lucky had to do was follow directions laid out by the television writers, as though he were assembling a piece of furniture. He was a gifted child, and he was going to grow up to be a brilliant, beautiful, beloved girl. Colleges would woo him. He'd study abroad. He was going to the Sorbonne. He was going to have letters after his name. He'd become a lawyer, or an academic. He'd drink fine wines, and wear Chanel, and when the time came, have his hair shaped into a flattering bob cut. If he had to be a boy, he should have been a real one, the kind they thought he was before he was born, because they had no ultrasound in those days, and could only tell gender by heart rate. Lucky has a boy's heart, you see. He would have been named after his grandfather, and been a good, dutiful boy, a credit to his mother. But the doctor said, It's a girl, and Lucky's spent his entire life saying, I beg to differ, Madam.  
Lucky always gets it wrong.  
It’s a summer afternoon, thick with damp, fishy heat. After he goes to 1, 2, 3 Booze and picks up a bottle of vodka, there’s no reason to stay out. You want to hide from the sun, which is always everywhere, taking liberties. Even at night, the air smells of sun, of summer, hot earth, the sweat and breath of plants. At home, Lucky takes a long nap, The Godless Spinner playing, the volume turned down so low that it’s nearly silent. It’s a sweet, thin, gruel of sound. It’s evening when Lucky wakes, but it’s still so bright. The heat and light make him feel weak. He drinks cold water, and waits for Murray to appear on Tumbril, and when Murray, does, they talk, as they usually do, about beautiful men. You’re not obsessed with something if you’re addicted to it, if you feel pain when it’s taken away. And you can’t really be addicted to it if you need it to stay alive. After he almost died, Lucky learned the difference. Doctors won’t give you medication for the pain you feel, because they’re afraid that you’ll become an addict, as though pain weren’t as enduring and demanding a condition as addiction, the difference between the two almost a sartorial matter. But pain is like a religious experience: many people will say that God exists, but if you look into their eyes, you can see that, never having seen God, they don’t know what they’re talking about. If you tell them that you’ve seen God, they think that you’re lying; at best, exaggerating, and at worst, actually evil.   
And love?  
What’s that?  
It’s a body, made of systems: obsession; addiction; need for something that keeps you from dying; a long term treatment.  
Murray loves beautiful men. Loves them like you love beautiful clothes. You don't have to put it on your own body to find it beautiful. Even if it isn’t made for you, you can still love it. Anything done well is worthy of admiration.  
Lucky loves beautiful men. Loves them like you love food, and like you hate it, too, because your body needs it to stay alive. A vampire, for Lucky, beauty and sustenance are one in the same. You are what you eat. You first eat with your eyes. That’s how it began. Once, he saw a beautiful man, and thought: BE IN ME- like one of the vampires in a show he used to watch, a long time ago, before he knew that vampires were real. In those days, he used to feel all the time as though he weren't real, and could fall off of the face of the earth. That should have been how he guessed that he was a vampire; always in a state of just barely existing, like a story. What's the life of the zero, the negative?  
Several years ago, Lucky started going to a support group for relatives and friends of vampires. It's understood that many of the members are, themselves, vampires. You can be born one, or made into one. The only rule is that no one feeds on anyone in the group. But how do you know, with the vampires who don't need blood; just energy? There are certain tells. Prolonged eye contact. Overly familiar terms of address. A lack of boundaries. Unnecessary touching. It's funny how close the vampire is, in mechanical terms, to the kind of asshole just about everyone’s met. The difference being that the asshole wants your time or your money or your attention; the vampire merely wants your life. Well, some of the thing that makes you alive. Who’d want an entire life? It sounds like much too much work to maintain. Half of a life is barely manageable.  
This is how Lucky and Murray Murphy meet: both are fans of a show called Batshit City. One of the actors is an extremely beautiful man, and Lucky, like many fans, falls into a trance of writing about the character he plays; many glazed, hazy fantasies about his character with other male characters on the show, fucking the way that Lucky wishes he could. Lucky, the born vampire, sucks the stuff to write the life he should have had. Some people like the stories that Lucky writes, and Murray is one of them.  
The vampire’s life is the life of dreams. A spirit of the air, he can suck the life from people on the wind. It blows off of them like fumes. Sometimes, when he was younger, he was fortunate, and met men who were interested by the thing, letting him drink a very little bit of their blood. In the hospital, though, he had a transfusion, and made a big to-do about finding it horrifying. It was so that no one would suspect. His brain was also soggy with dilaudid at the time, and he can remember finding everything alien and disgusting. He’d had the condition of life wrung from him, and then been yanked out of the condition of death, and he belonged to neither, felt slimy from being touched by both. The second that the blood was introduced into his body, he began to recover. Isn’t that funny?  
No, of course not. His body had lost necessary components, after the trauma of illness and surgery. He began to heal, which is a thing that human beings do.  
No. It is very, very funny. The reluctant vampire, lying like the living dead in a bed that stinks of shit and offal, a piece of exposed intestine blooming out of his side, pissing himself on purpose to get back at the nurses who throw him around like a leather handbag and scrub him with cold water at three in the morning. Life has a lot of different shadings.  
He dreams of men who are easy with their lives. He dreams of their blood filling him, as though he were a great, pumping heart. It touches him, hot and electric, and he’ll live again. He dreams of his loves, of making small cuts in their fingers or shoulders, sucking at the trickle of love. Most of all, he dreams of them letting him. How he dreams, that they love him, and want him to be well.

Once a week, an hour after the sun sets, Lucky goes to his support group. It’s out of habit more than anything. He never feels like speaking, the sound of his voice offensive to him. Sometimes, he barely feels like existing in the presence of others; having to be in the same place as them, having them look at him is excruciating. Staying at home feels worse, though. If he goes out, at least he’ll come home relieved to no longer have to endure the society of others. When he returns home, everything will be all right for having altered his condition.  
The rules of logic and emotion demand sacrifice: Lucky has to speak sometime. Steadfastly, Lucky refuses to. Tonight, as on other nights, he drinks coffee, and lets other people talk. A woman can’t stop leaking. She’s terrified of having something vital taken from her by a co-worker. Everyday, she feels less and less present. Is she still there, she asks. Several people assure her that she is, and she smiles faintly as she slowly sits back down. A young man is thrilled by his vampiric girlfriend. For the first time, he truly feels needed. She’s an amazing fuck, he volunteers. Someone groans. A woman rolls her eyes. There’s a barking cough of boredom. Lucky reaches out a hand from within, and sticks it into the most attractive man there. Whatever Lucky takes out of him fills Lucky like soup. Then, Lucky feels alert and solid. It’s like Lucky’s self has been poured into something Lucky-shaped, which was empty before and waiting. Only now is there a person here.  
After the meeting, Lucky sails by Wino Wonderland, and picks up a big bottle of vodka, its glass textured like ice with the solemn clarity of church windows. He takes it home, drinks until he feels like a mouthful of chewed food, and falls asleep watching Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.

"Anal Crypt"

Lucky and Murray are writing a Batshit City story together. It’s about one of the recurring characters, well-liked, but not often written. It’s also a story about a haunted house. These days, Lucky writes little else. He’ll convince Murray to make this issue of their fanzine, “Anal Crypt”, a themed issue. Halloween in July. When is it not Halloween? Why would one not want it to be Halloween? Imagine the breath of fall, with its smell of cigarillo and fog, all the time. Imagine living forever in a fist of ruby and amber, the bare nape of your neck just out of reach of the frigid grinning teeth of winter. A dream of winter’s teeth, and what they mean when they’re not touching you, but you can see them.  
Halloween, the distillation of autumn. Autumn, forever. To be always cold, and thrilling at the cold, and cast into the cold, and lamenting your solitude, and crowing about your freedom.

_Archie Krantz is a frequenter of historical homes. He loves old things, dead things. Better still, if life lingers in them. It’s not their original life, but a different kind. He collects these things. From the homes he enters, he takes small objects, that no one would notice were missing. In his home, he keeps them in boxes. It’s a cozy way for things to end up; the things that must have believed that no one would love them, or that love was a relic. Love was in the past. Love was over. Love was ancient and deceased.  
He’s had a rough night. Trouble sent him out on some fool’s errand, the kind of fool’s errand, actually, that Trouble used to have to do, when Peacock Pam and Aldo Aldo were in charge, and on his way home, Archie met Mr. Anhedonia.  
Archie’s not afraid of vigilantes. Vigilantes are only scary because you know that, under the costumes, they aren’t cops or criminals, but normal people. They’re only scary to you if you’re afraid of killing a normal person. Mr. Anhedonia, though, doesn’t behave like a normal person. Archie knows for a fact that Anhedonia has at least one body on him. Last March, Archie saw Anhedonia pull his knife out of someone’s guts, just like they were in a fucking horror movie, and shit, though, this, of course, was way more interesting than a movie. From the gloom at the mouth of an alley near the river, Archie watched Anhedonia clean the knife on the dead man’s shirt, and then run away, curiously quiet. Anhedonia must wear leather-soled shoes, flat on the bottoms. When Anhedonia was gone, Archie looked at the corpse’s face. It wasn’t anyone Archie recognized. That made sense. Vigilantes are opportunists: they wait for easy targets; muggers or purse-snatchers or car-jackers, who operate in the relative open and whose activities are unmistakable. A few weeks later, though, when a body bobbed up out of the river, also stabbed, with a name attached to it that was known to Archie, Archie had to wonder. No, stabbing wasn’t the most exotic way to kill someone, but the two events lined up in his mind, and became one.  
If he hadn’t been so fast, tonight, Anhedonia might have finished him the same way. Anhedonia’s brutal, but he’s inexperienced. His knife was dull, so he had to lean more heavily on the blade, which meant that he had to get closer, make a broader movement. He slashed Archie across the belly, but Archie jumped back, and his corset caught most of the impact. There were cuts, but they were shallow, like a kitten’s scratches. Smiling, he dabs the cuts with alcohol, and bandages them. He presses his finger into one of the bandaged wounds, just enough to produce a tiny bite of sensation. He’ll keep this to himself. Trouble doesn’t have to know what’s going on on the streets. If he wanted to know, he’d be out there, himself, doing his own dirty work, instead of lording it over the socialites in his nightclub. Aldo had known how to delegate, but he’d also known when it was time to remind everyone of who he was and how he’d gotten everything that was his.  
Anhedonia notwithstanding, Archie had done his job, and Trouble dismissed him curtly without further instructions, so Archie’s on his own the next night. He’s feeling moody, so he dismisses the idea of going to the clubs. They aren’t what they once were. Of course, Whip-snatch won’t let him in on his own, and he doesn’t feel like looking for Sally or Diana. He still speaks to Jeanette, and she could get him into Zero, but that place has gotten weird. Someone disappeared from there not too long ago. It ruins the atmosphere. It’s… he frowns-- it’s disrespectful. If you have to do things like that, there are ways that are both untraceable and socially correct. Look at Mr. Anhedonia. It used to be so free there, at Zero, but now, everyone is frightened, and not in a good way, not in a fun way, not in a way that you can work with. Now, everyone is afraid for their life, even if they’d never admit it; it’s a chill that runs through the air like a wire of gold, making people cover themselves, and turn in on themselves, stick to people they know well. The Deuce is dependable, but it’s a little too correct, if you know what I mean. For it being a gay bar, everyone’s just too straight. They’re into what they do, but at the end of the evening, they go home feeling happy and sound, and the next day, they go to work, and perform well, and at night, they sleep in soft, clean beds with people they love.  
Now, what’s the fun of that?  
He’ll go to a dead place, a place of the dead. It’s where he’s always felt like he belongs.  
How did he find this place? Funnily, he can’t really remember. It was always there. In dreams, sometimes, memories come to him. He used to walk past it with his mother, on the way to school, and tried to frighten himself by telling his mother that it was a haunted house. If one were willing to apply one’s imagination, it looked like it could be a haunted house. The shuttered windows were always closed. The architectural style was spare Gothic revival. When he was older, he approached it, eager to learn its secrets, but already growing skeptical. Ghosts didn’t exist. If they were real, he would have already encountered one, because he went looking for things like that, but he never found them. He rang the doorbell, and no one answered. He waited before the front door, until he began to feel stupid. He shrugged, and then went home.  
He was in his twenties before he did anything about the house. One night, he snuck in with Sally. Diana volunteered, too quickly, to watch the door, from the outside, and Archie sneered, Okay, baby. Gently, he picked the lock, and the door opened, softly and quietly, and he and Sally entered.  
It was just a house. It couldn’t really be anything else. The furniture and objects were old, but not old enough to be real antiques. The place was dark, but neat and quiet.  
“This sucks,” Sally whispered.  
“Then, wait outside,” Archie spat, picked up a pen from the table in the living room, and put it in his pocket. Sally folded her arms over her chest, but followed him through the house. It was totally empty, which was at once a relief and a disappointment.  
“What was in there?” Diana asked.  
“A lot of nothing,” Archie said, but immediately felt weird about it. Now that he was outside of it, he realized that here was something there. Maybe it was not anything that he could see, but it was… a feeling. He liked it. It was made for him. He didn’t want to tell anyone else about it, and making it sound boring was the best way to put off questions, but…  
He didn’t like being mean about the house. Silently, he apologized, biting the inside of his cheek.  
The next night, he returned, on his own. In the close, soft, precious darkness, darkness that enclosed, like your eyelid, he walked through the house again. This time, he found a room. It had not been there the night before. He let himself in. It was a bedroom. The big canopy bed filled most of the room. In the bed, there was a man.   
“Shit,” Archie whispered, and started to leave.  
The door had closed. It wouldn’t open. Strangely, he wasn’t afraid. Or, if he was, he realized that it was stupid to be afraid: this was what he’d wanted, what he’d come here looking for. Hadn’t he wanted to be scared? Hadn’t he always wanted this place, in particular, to scare him? In the dark, the man was made up of planes and angles; the abstractness of the shapes calmed Archie. Terror was made of disorder, and disorder was round, edgeless, borderless. With his sharp features, the man was very orderly, tidy; like a tool, something made for a purpose.  
“Who are you?” Archie whispered.  
“I’m the house,” the man said, or seemed to say. In the dark, Archie couldn’t see his lips move.  
Archie shrugged. “Okay. Are you a ghost?”  
“Yes.”  
Archie laughed. “Are you dead?”  
“In a manner of speaking.”  
“Are you some kind of vampire, or something?”  
“Yes.”  
“A vampire and a ghost,” Archie said, not even trying not to sound impressed. “Do you want to drink my blood?”  
“Yes.”  
“What, all of it?”  
“No. I don’t need all of it.”  
“If I cut myself, will you drink my blood?” His heart was beating faster. Strangely, he found it more embarrassing than the fact that he was starting to get hard.  
“Yes.”  
“Should I lie down next to you?”  
“Yes.”  
It was difficult in the dark, with the feeling that he could fall through its softness, uncertain with every step, every movement, but Archie got on the bed, and arranged himself around the man, who didn’t stir. There was the smell of violets and old paper in the air. Archie looked at the man. His face wasn’t young, but it wasn’t old. The features were completely still. The eyes seemed to be both open and closed. The man wore a white nightshirt, open to show his throat. His chest was still. Archie was sure that if he put his hand over the man’s heart, no pulse would answer that which called from Archie’s fingers and palm. Archie took out his knife. He made a small cut along the pad of his fingertip, and pressed it to the man’s lips. The miniature movements of a tongue. It tickled, like a moth’s foot. After a moment, Archie took his finger away, sucked it then wrapped it in the hem of his tee shirt.  
“Thank you,” the man said. The eyelids seemed to flutter.  
“You’re welcome,” said Archie. Suddenly, he was tired. “Can I sleep here for a while?”  
“Yes.”  
Falling asleep was rich and clean, like being washed by the sea. In his sleep, or in a dream, the man lay atop him, did things to him. Even if it was a dream, in a way, it was real, because Archie woke up with his underwear sticking to him. He smiled. He stretched. He kissed the soft, unmoving mouth of the man lying next to him. When he tried the door again, it opened._

_He doesn’t come here all the time. It’s not something he needs all the time. Most of the time, he likes the hot, violent crush of the living. Their blood flows. Their hearts beat. Their breath is hot and damp. They imagine and dream and think and feel. You don’t know what they’ll do to you, so you have to be careful. That’s what makes it good.  
The dead, though, are possessed of an essential dryness and silence. They’re finished. Nothing else happens to or for them, even when it does. The dead can be known. The living cannot.  
The house doesn’t change, because it’s dead. It’s always the same, and Archie is glad. When he hasn’t seen it for a while, it seems new. He remembers the things that he felt here, feeling them as though they were new, and also feeling the blunted edges of the feelings as they are now. Memory is a clutch of various textures. Every time it comes to you, something has been added.  
The door. The room. The bed. The man. Archie undresses, except for his dog collar and his corset. He lies down, and runs the edge of his knife over his lips, over the bare part of his sternum, then down, along the head of his cock. The dust in the room seems to heave, as though taking a breath. The curtains around the bed beat like a heart. He cuts his finger, and presses it to the man’s lips. The lips move, as those of a reader. Archie slips his finger between the lips, over the gums. He sucks his finger, waits a moment, and cuts the one next to it. He presses this against the man’s lips. He takes back his hand. He leans over the face. He looks at the mouth, now a dark blur. He closes his eyes. He kisses. Though the man’s arms don’t move, Archie’s embraced. He feels hands on him; too many to belong to just one person. Teeth first pinch then bite into his flesh. Against the dead man, Archie’s body snaps as in convulsions. With a ragged breath like the sound of material tearing, he kisses the man again, rubs himself against the unmoving body. He lies back, still for a moment, and then gets up, fumbles around in his pockets until he finds a pair of small alligator clips. Before he lies down again, he retrieves his knife from between the sheets. He places it next to him. He licks his fingers, pinches his nipples into stiffness, and attaches the clips, his hips jerking up with the hard, frigid shock of pain. The sound he makes for the man ruptures the silence, almost comically. All human sounds are ridiculous, but they could be a novelty for the dead. His cock is hard, dripping, and he scrapes the underside of it with the tip of his knife. He makes a shallow cut across his breast, and wipes away the blood with his fingers. He presses his fingers to the man’s lips, rubs his fingers across them.  
He gets on top of the man again. His skin, his flesh, his bones, are alive enough for both of them. The sensation is one of simultaneously penetrating and being penetrated. Archie comes almost instantly. He stays where he is. Do the man’s lips part? Do his eyelids flutter, then slip slowly closed? Do the man’s lips bow into a somnolent smile?  
Yes, they do. All of that. Archie presses his lips to the man’s, but he doesn’t kiss. He takes a deep breath in through his nose, and exhales through his mouth. Beneath him, if just for a second, the body breathes. Then, it’s again silent and still. Clean and dry. Tightly ordered. Archie rests his forehead against the pillow, and sighs in relief._

What do you call something that just can’t change?  
A ghost, obviously.  
Obviously.  
Sometimes, magic is just making things do what they were already going to do. It’s like reminding someone’s blood to flow. If you love them, maybe you could remind their blood to flow so many times that it forgot that it one day had to stop. You could make their heart beat forever. You could make their body fall into a dream in which it forgets how to age and die.  
Think of when your heart skips a beat- how it thrills in that moment. Imagine that stretching out into eternity. It’s a dream from which you won’t wake up. That’s what death is. It’s a strange, veiled dream on a hot, sunny afternoon, when you feel tight and feverish, and you want to wake up, but you can’t. You can see everything around you, but you can’t move. You’re not sure if you’re breathing. That’s what death is.  
A ghost, I suppose, never sinks back down into natural sleep. It stays suspended, caught in the red stage curtains. Caught in light and heat. Walking around with its dead brain blazing. You’re in pain, and you want relief, and that’s all there is. A person can live with pain as long as they think that there’s a reward for enduring. When it’s nothing but pain, and there is no reward, and you’ve been in pain for so long that there couldn’t possibly be a reward to balance the sheer size of your pain, nothing is negotiable. You become a ghost. You become nothing but will, driving toward a single point. You want only one thing. It’s not even with hunger or need anymore, but with the simple fact of want. You want this. You always have. You always will. Even after you’ve gotten it, you’ll continue to want it. Did you ever know anything else? Were you ever really a person?

I had a dream that I was an exorcist. I said that people were free of demons, and they were. The important thing was not to look them in the eye. I could look just to the side, though. I always thought that the opposite was true; that the way to push something out was to look at it directly. The truth is--

There was a house. A building that contained a house; a series of apartments, actually. I walked in through a shop, downstairs. There were posters on the walls; so old that they were not torn, but cracked. A door opened into a corridor, where I found a great window, covered in white lace, facing a staircase. I walked up the stairs. There were several stories, more than I’d thought. I kept walking up, past many doors of dark wood, set in dark-patterned walls.  
I was in another part of the house. There was another staircase, in the back. I walked upstairs, and stopped at one of the doors. I opened the door. Light poured out; gentle, milk light, like white cotton. In the room full of paleness and softness,  
he waited for me.

The fact is that immortality, eternity, is the consolation prize. Life, real life, only has to happen, once. It’s a natural span, whatever that means for a person’s era. It’s not  
It’s not   
It’s not blank.  
It doesn’t just go on.

"The Devil, You Know"

You’re a monster. And you always knew it. Your heart is a clot of poison. Poison paints your veins. It shimmers off of you, like an aura, like perfume. People smell it. It makes them fear you. Nobody’s ever going to love you.  
Unexpectedly, though, you’re capable of love. It’s a monster’s love. It’s hunger so complete that it could only be for something living. Only something breathing, with a beating heart could approach this hunger that never ends. You only want them, and you want them all the time. You’re glad that they’re alone, now. You’re glad that they’re getting older, that they haven’t gotten married, appear to be unattached. You can’t bring yourself to pretend that you don’t care about their happiness, but you’d rather that their happiness be you. You don’t want them to have anyone else in their life. If they do, if they have a choice, then you’ll surely remain alone. Even though you know the shape of your fate, you don’t like it. You don’t have to like being alone. I can’t abandon my hunger. I can’t send it into memory, look ahead only to clean days. I only want them, and I want them all the time.  
Love is the dreaming sleep of the ghost: it propels forward with urgency, but not with meaning. They say that something like depression is the closest analog to death, to going into the underworld, but I know better. It’s love. It’s what they hunger for, both living and dead. For the dead, it’s easy: light a candle, or leave flowers on their grave. For the living, it’s a little more complicated, life being naturally divorced from the state in which nothing exists but thought and feeling. Love is the separation of the soul from the body.  
It’s ecstasy.  
Fall in love with me.

Once, I said to myself: What if I just don’t die?  
Then, I laughed.


	2. NO

TITLE CARD: NO  
TITLE CARD: DOME

_The streets aren’t safe, you know. You take a long, coldly appraising look over the night time streets of Batshit City. The world is black and white. The lights are like globes; you could reach out and touch them. The cars file by, as slowly as beasts of flesh approaching their place of execution, already in their shrouds of rain, mist, and smoke. The people are the suggestions of figures; their motion is living, but their appearance evokes mannequins, statues come to life.  
Did you hear about the Bantams? It was terrible. Their son, Geoffrey, saw the whole thing. He’s staying with the Harlows, now, while someone attempts to shake loose a relative from somewhere- but this is a perfunctory effort in aid of a lost cause. The boy is totally alone in the world. Both sets of grandparents are dead. Martina’s famous father, the diplomat, died last year. Both Martina and Taylor were only children. There’s nowhere for Geoffrey to go, and of course, you don’t take a Bantam from his home, so there, he’ll remain, alone with the butler and housekeeper, the day staff, the gardeners and tutors and cooks and maids.  
Well, someone’s life ends, but the rest of us go on living. What else is there to do? We just know, now, that life is so very precious. It’s meant to be lived. It renews itself, Dagmara thinks suddenly, feeling as though this is the most profound thing in the world. Yes, it renews itself. People go out of life everyday, but they come back, in new forms. She must tell Ursula.  
From a distance which seems greater than it is in the gloom, we see Dagmara sitting in the living room, in the window seat’s hollow of light. She has the phone in her lap. She picks up the receiver, and dials.  
It’s late, so Ursula is slow to pick up the phone. Coming in close from the opposite end of the room, we see Ursula as Dagmara pictures her, her hair fanned electrically on her pillow, a single hand reaching out of the mass of bed sheets to hold the phone to her ear. It fills Dagmara with such excruciating tenderness that she has to clutch the phone to her middle for a second, before speaking._

URSULA: “Yes?”  
DAGMARA, whispers: “I just realized something.”  
URSULA: “Oh?”   
Dagmara imagines Ursula raising one eyebrow. Valentin does the same thing.  
DAGMARA: “Of course, it’s terrible that the Bantams were killed, especially like that, in front of their little boy, but it’s all all right-- in a cosmic sense, I mean, because new life is emerging every second. Ursula. I’m going to have a baby.”  
URSULA, in voice over, as we focus on Dagmara’s face: “Oh. You and Valentin must be over the moon.”  
Slowly smiling, DAGMARA says: “But you see, I think that it’s not his baby. I think that the baby is yours.”  
Ursula makes an incredulous sound. Dagmara can’t even blame her, and tries very hard not to be offended. No, it doesn’t conform to the laws of science, but not everything does!  
URSULA, her voice already thickening again into the crust of sleep: “I’ll talk to you about this in the morning.”  
DAGMARA: “Yes. All right.”  
But how can Dagmara sleep now? Sighing, she puts the phone down, and goes back the bedroom. The light on her side of the bed is still on, but Valentin is already sleeping, turned in on himself. Ursula, Dagmara imagines, is sleeping in the same position.  
At breakfast the next morning, she sees Ursula’s hand, almost superimposed over Valentin’s in the way that he holds his spoon. They don’t look very similar, but the way that they move and speak is often identical. It’s like seeing a ghost, sometimes. That is, in a way, what being related to someone is: you’re animated by the same ghosts, which drift in and out of the haunted house of your body, showing parts of the collected hereditary past like images projected onto a screen.  
DAGMARA: “Valentin.”  
He looks at her over the rim of his coffee cup. VALENTIN: “Yes?”  
DAGMARA: “I think- No, I know. I’m going to have a baby.”  
He puts down his coffee cup. For a moment, his face is blank, but then, it cracks into a radiant smile.   
VALENTIN: “When? Do you know when?”  
DAGMARA: “Seven months, or so.”  
VALENTIN: “I’m so happy.” He kisses her.  
DAGMARA: “I was wondering how to tell you. It came as something of a shock.”  
VALENTIN: “Oh, yes, I’m sure. These things always are.”  
DAGMARA: “I thought about telling you last night, but then, you fell asleep.”  
VALENTIN: “If I’d known, I would have stayed up!”  
DAGMARA: “Well, I told Ursula that I thought-”  
VALENTIN: “You told her before you told me?”  
DAGMARA: “She’s a woman, Valentin.”  
VALENTIN: “Oh, yes. I understand.”  
DAGMARA: “I told Ursula that I thought that it was life renewing itself. The Bantams just died, and it’s terrible, and their poor little boy must miss them terribly, but in a larger sense, everything that’s dead comes back.”  
VALENTIN: “Yes, I suppose that it does. That’s a lovely way to look at it.”  
DAGMARA: “We’re going to be so happy.”  
Valentin smiles.   
VALENTIN: “Yes, we are.”  
DAGMARA: “Do you think it would be all right if I asked Ursula to come and stay with us?”  
VALENTIN: “Why?”  
DAGMARA: “I’ll need help around here, and I don’t expect you to put your life on hold. I don’t think you’d even want to.”  
VALENTIN: “Ursula has a life, too. I’m glad that you two get along, and that you trust her, but I don’t know if it’s necessarily something she’d want to do.”  
DAGMARA: “The baby is her niece or nephew; why wouldn’t she?”  
VALENTIN: “She’s always lived her life her way. She’s always been very independent, even when we were young.”  
Then, Dagmara can’t say anything else, because that would give it away. Eventually, she’ll have to tell Valentin, but not yet. It’s too much, at once.  
Or maybe, she’ll never tell him. If the baby looks like Ursula, that certainly isn’t strange. Sometimes, it’s more fun not to know. People like to say that secrets are bad things, but they’re so much like mysteries. Some mysteries aren’t made to be solved, but simply appreciated. This was why Ursula’s assertion that it wasn’t possible for the baby to be hers bothered Dagmara so much: who cares what’s possible and what isn’t? You should only care about what you observe, what you feel, what you know to be true.  
They sit together in silence, both placid and full until Valentin gets up to take his breakfast dishes to the kitchen. He kisses the top of Dagmara’s head.  
Later, dressed and alone in the apartment, Dagmara approaches the phone again.  
Ursula speaks in voice over.  
URSULA: “Yes?”  
DAGMARA: “It’s me. You said that we would speak this morning.”  
URSULA: “Yes. I hadn’t forgotten.”  
DAGMARA: “Could you come here and meet me?”  
URSULA: “Yes, but not for that long. I have a lot to do today.”  
DAGMARA: “Well, what if I met you someplace?”  
URSULA: “Are you sure you want to talk about this in public?”  
DAGMARA: “Why not?”  
Dagmara looks straight ahead for a long time, as though meeting Ursula’s gaze. We see Ursula, at home, on the opposite side of the screen, looking straight ahead, as though meeting Dagmara’s gaze.  
URSULA: “I’ll come to the house.”

Dagmara admits Ursula. Once the door is closed, Dagmara embraces Ursula. For a second, Ursula freezes, but then brings Dagmara’s face up to hers, and kisses her. They kiss for a long time, in shadow, next to the closed door. In the dim light, they begin to look like one creature with many and divers parts. They move away from the wall, walking together into another part of the house, and we hold for a moment on the wall.  
In the bedroom, we see Dagmara lying across the bed. We don’t see her face, only her body at an abstract angle, so that we aren’t immediately sure what we are seeing. We move leisurely around the room, taking our gaze from her, and we hear her moan. Slowly, we move back, as Ursula stands where she was kneeling before Dagmara, gently pulling down Dagmara’s skirt again.  
DAGMARA: “Are we going to talk about the baby?”  
URSULA, straightening her clothing: “If there is a baby, it’s Valentin’s.”  
Ursula lies down next to Dagmara, then leans over her and kisses her passionately.  
URSULA: “In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have what it takes to make a baby with you.”  
DAGMARA: “It’s a philosophical child, a child of the mind.”  
URSULA: “Dagmar, that is fucking stupid.”  
DAGMARA: “Don’t say that about my child.”  
URSULA: “It’s an absurd premise.”  
DAGMARA: “Does that mean that I have to raise him alone?”  
URSULA: “You’re not alone. You’re married. To my brother. Who, by the way, would probably have some very definite opinions about your state and who caused it.”  
DAGMARA: “He isn’t living it. He can guess, but he doesn’t really know what it’s like. [With sudden illumination.] You don’t either, come to think of it. I’m the only one who knows what it’s like. I really am alone.”  
URSULA: “You’re not alone. You’re just… out of your mind.”  
Before Dagmara can protest, Ursula kisses her again, and they rock back and forth in each others’ arms, pulling off each others’ clothing. We pan away, into black.

Later, Dagmara and Ursula sit at the dining room table, dressed, composed, quietly drinking coffee.  
DAGMARA: “Will you come to stay with us?”  
URSULA: “What for?”  
DAGMARA: “To help me with the baby.”  
URSULA: “I don’t care for children.”  
DAGMARA: “But it’s yours!”  
URSULA: “Even if it were, somehow, mine, I don’t want a child. I don’t know anything about them, either.”  
DAGMARA: “You can learn!”  
URSULA: “All right, then I just don’t want to.”  
DAGMARA: “Are you going to abandon me if my body is ruined?”  
URSULA: “What?”  
DAGMARA: “Are you going to abandon me because you find me repulsive? Do you already find me repulsive?”  
URSULA: “It’s a little soon to be talking about this.”  
Dagmara says nothing, but folds her arms over her chest.  
At the door, Dagmara turns her head to the side for Ursula to kiss her cheek. Ursula turns Dagmara’s face back toward her, kisses her mouth, and they kiss for a long time, standing next to the door. Ursula opens the door just enough to let herself out, and leaves.

Dagmara and Valentin shop for the things that the baby will need. They choose plain furniture in blond wood. The furniture is delivered to the house.

Urusula sits at the dining room table, smoking a cigarette, pointedly not looking at the high chair next to her.  
URSULA: “Isn’t it a little bit soon to buy all of this stuff? You aren’t even showing yet.”  
DAGMARA: “There’s nothing wrong with being prepared.”  
Ursula frowns.  
DAGMARA: “Are you sure that you won’t reconsider staying here?”  
URSULA: “Oh, and where would I sleep?”  
DAGMARA: “There’s lots of room. You could sleep in the baby’s room until the baby’s in it.”  
URSULA: “And where would I sleep after it’s born? Would I sleep between you and Valentin, like your little baby?”  
Dagmara says nothing.  
URSULA: “Or, maybe you would sleep between us. You’re not going to leave your husband, obviously-- especially not now that you have a child. That’s the thing about children, Dagmar: they change everything. Suddenly, it’s not just you alone in your head anymore. Your baby gets pushed in, and you get pushed out of there.”  
DAGMARA: “It’s not going to be that way.”  
URSULA: “Oh, no? How do you know?”  
DAGMARA: “How do you know that it will?”  
URSULA: “I’ve seen it happen to enough women. You stop being a real person.”  
DAGMARA: “That isn’t true.”  
URSULA: “You worry about your body, but it’s your mind that’s going to go. You’ll lose all connection to the adult world, the real world. You’ll regress into a prehistoric state. You’ll become a sleepy, cozy mammal with nothing on its mind but soft, warm things. You’ll turn into a bear or a dog. The road of biology leads away from humanity.”  
DAGMARA: “That’s a terrible thing to say.”  
URSULA: “Oh, I’m sure it is.”  
DAGMARA (increasingly upset): “How could you say that to me?”  
URSULA: “Would you rather I lied? Would you rather I told you that I think that it’s fabulous that you’re pregnant, that I think that it’s really interesting, that I think you’re certainly correct in thinking that it’s mine?”  
DAGMARA: “How can you be that cold?”  
URSULA: “It’s just the way I am. You know that this is the way I am.”  
DAGMARA: “No, I didn’t know. Not really.”  
URSULA: “I think you’re overreacting.”  
DAGMARA: “I want you to get out.”  
Ursula shrugs, and we watch her get up. Dagmara stays seated, her arms folded over her chest. We hear the door close.  
Dagmara’s still sitting at the table when Valentin comes in.  
VALENTIN: “Hey, what are you doing?”  
DAGMARA: “Oh. Just daydreaming.”  
VALENTIN: “I missed you today.”  
DAGMARA: “We need to hire a nanny.”  
VALENTIN: “All right.”  
DAGMARA: “Not yet, obviously, but I’ll need help with the baby. I don’t want to turn into some kind of idiot, here, alone with him.”  
VALENTIN: “You couldn’t be an idiot, if you tried.”  
DAGMARA: “I’m so afraid.”  
Valentin puts his arms around her. VALENTIN: “Of course you are. This is a major life event. You’ve never had a child before, nor have I. We’ll have to figure it out, but we have each other.”  
She starts crying.  
VALENTIN: “I know. It’s rough.”  
DAGMARA: “How could you know?”  
VALENTIN: “Well, I don’t, but I can guess.”  
DAGMARA: “Can we go out? Can we go out someplace? I don’t want to be in the house right now.”  
VALENTIN: “Yes. Anywhere you want.”  
She kisses him. She loves him.  
They go out. It’s dark, a rich, luxurious night. The night wraps gently around them. We see them walk around, just two people in a crowd. The rush and crush of humanity is reassuring, gladdening. They walk through the park. We look overhead, at the interlaced fingers of winter trees. They sit at a café, drinking warm drinks. They decide spontaneously to go to the movies. When they come out, it’s darker, still, and there are fewer people on the streets. We watch them walk out of the theater, and then away, figures gradually becoming smaller, disappearing into the darkness.

Dagmara and Valentin go shopping for maternity clothes. He holds her hand, and swings it back and forth as they walk through the shopping center. She sees a baby in a stroller, and automatically recoils. She looks at the baby. The baby looks at her. She shakes her head. She frowns.

Dagmara and Valentin arrange the baby’s room. It has a strangely cold feeling about it, though this may just be because there’s no one yet to live in it.

Dagmara and Valentin sit up in bed together, reading.  
VALENTIN: “Did you and Ursula have a fight?”  
DAGMARA: “Why do you ask?”  
VALENTIN: “You usually speak to each on the phone at least once a week, but she hasn’t called in more than a month, and I don’t recall you calling her. I haven’t spoken to her, and she hasn’t come to the house.”  
DAGMARA: “We did have a little argument.”  
VALENTIN: “What was it about?”  
Dagmara sighs. DAGMARA: “Well, the baby, actually. She said some unkind things about motherhood.”  
VALENTIN: “I’m sure that she didn’t mean it.”  
DAGMARA: “There may be some things that you don’t know about your sister.”  
VALENTIN: “I know that she isn’t maternal, but she’s not cruel.”  
DAGMARA: “I don’t know if I can forgive her.”  
VALENTIN: “Please try. It would mean a lot to me.”  
Dagmara sighs again. DAGMARA: “I’m going to go to sleep.”  
Valentin kisses her, but continues reading. Frowning, she turns onto her side.

In the morning, Dagmara picks up the phone in the living room. Almost immediately, she hangs up. She goes into the bathroom, and closes the door. After a moment, we hear her moan. The water runs. Straightening her clothes, she goes back to the phone, and picks it up again.  
URSULA (in voice over): “Yes?”  
DAGMARA: “Are you sorry for what you said?”  
URSULA: “No.”  
DAGMARA: “Oh.”  
URSULA: “You could always make me apologize.”  
DAGMARA: “Oh.”  
URSULA: “Should I come over?”  
DAGMARA: “No, no.”  
URSULA: “All right.”  
DAGMARA: “No. Yes. Come over.”

Dagmara meets Ursula at the door. They don’t speak. They kiss as soon as the door is closed.

Later, they sit up in bed, undressed, Ursula smoking a cigarette. Dagmara frowns, but says nothing.  
DAGMARA: “I think that you’re terrible, but I still want you in my life.”  
URSULA: “I know that I’m terrible, and I still want you in my life.”  
DAGMARA: “I think, though, that we should stop seeing each other until after the baby’s born.”  
URSULA: “If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do.”  
DAGMARA: “I still think it’s yours.”  
URSULA: “I still think that’s stupid.”  
DAGMARA: “I’m in love with you.”  
URSULA: “Does Valentin know?”  
DAGMARA: “I don’t think that Valentin knows what he knows. Sometimes, he says things that wouldn’t make sense unless he knew, but it’s like he’s talking into his sleep.”  
URSULA: “Do you think he’s angry, about what he may or may not know?”  
DAGMARA: “Valentin doesn’t get angry. I think he finds it unseemly.”  
URSULA (smiling): “Yes, that’s about right.”  
DAGMARA: “I love him, too.”  
URSULA: “Well, they say that it can be done.”  
DAGMARA: “What?”  
URSULA: “Loving two people at once. It’s a little ‘free love’ for my taste.”  
DAGMARA: “Don’t be cruel.”  
URSULA (putting her cigarette out, and embracing Dagmara): “I’m not. I won’t.”  
Fade to black.

Dagmara, Valentin, and Ursula have a quiet, happy dinner together. Valentin raises his glass.

The three of them go to the movies together. They visit museums. They go to art galleries. Dagmara gets progressively wider. Valentin and Dagmara leave Ursula at her door, each kissing her chastely on the cheek. Ursula’s expression is placid, unreadable. Does Dagmara look disappointed? Maybe.

Dagmara, fat and wobbling, walks down the street with Valentin, who holds her arm. He points out architectural features. They buy ice cream cones, and continue walking, eating them. It’s an idyllic, childish picture of life. They look happy and blank.

TITLE CARD: N.O.

The baby appears! Too soon, some might say, but maybe it’s just eager for life.  
We see Valentin and Dagmara, enraptured. Ursula’s face is expressionless.  
For the first time, we see the baby, sitting on a great cushion in the crib. It is very obviously a doll. It’s a well-made rag doll, with a sweet expression, it’s adorable, but it’s a doll.  
URSULA: “It’s a doll.”  
DAGMARA: “Yes, he is, isn’t he? Yes, he is.” She holds her face close to the baby’s.  
URSULA: “No, Dagmar. It’s actually a doll. [Looking at Valentin] It’s a doll, Valentin.”  
VALENTIN (Slowly, with great solemnity): “I think that he has our father’s eyes.”  
URSULA: “You can’t be serious.”  
VALENTIN: “He does!”  
URSULA (sighing): “Well, what’s his name?”  
DAGMARA: “Nigel Oscar.”  
URSULA (smiling slightly): “No.”  
VALENTIN: “What?”  
URSULA: “His initials spell ‘No’.”  
VALENTIN: “I suppose that they do.”  
Valentin and Dagmara look at each other.  
DAGMARA: “Would you like to hold him?”  
URSULA: “Not especially.”  
VALENTIN: “Ursula doesn’t like babies.”  
DAGMARA: “Oh, I know, but he’s so cute.” She picks up NO. “Couldn’t you just eat him up?”  
URSULA: “Pica.”  
DAGMARA: “What?”  
URSULA: “The compulsion to eat inedible objects is called pica.”  
Valentin and Dagmara look at each other, but say nothing.  
VALENTIN: “Why don’t we all go out for a walk together?”  
URSULA: “All right.”  
Dagmara and Valentin fuss over NO, putting him in his stroller, as Ursula watches. They walk out of the apartment.  
On the street, Valentin pushes the stroller, and the three of them go along arm-in-arm, Dagmara in the middle. We watch them at a distance. They speak, but we can’t hear what they say. Ursula smokes a cigarette, blowing the smoke away from NO until she catches herself, and frowns. Strangers look into the stroller, at first confused, then indulgent. Finally, we hear Valentin speak.  
VALENTIN (voice over): “I think he’s asleep. Let’s go home.”

In the living room, Valentin calls Ursula.  
URSULA (voice over): “Yes?”  
VALENTIN: “I hate to do it, but I need to ask you a favor.”  
URSULA (VO): “What is it?”  
VALENTIN: “Dagmara and I are going out tonight. We had a babysitter, but she canceled abruptly, and it’s too late for us to call around. Could you watch NO for us tonight?”  
URSULA (VO): “You’re joking.”  
VALENTIN: “I know, I know. It’s short notice, and you don’t have a lot of experience with babies, but NO is really well-behaved. He hardly makes a sound. You’d just have to keep him company, really.”  
URSULA (VO): “Fine.”  
VALENTIN: “Thank you. You’re the best, Ursula.”  
URSULA (VO): “I know.”

Valentin and Dagmara in evening clothes greet Ursula at the door. The say hello briefly, and rush off.  
Ursula walks around the house. She looks at NO in his crib. She goes to the living room, turns on the TV, and lights a cigarette.  
We watch her watch TV, smoke, drink a glass of wine, eat a TV dinner, as the light outside fades. She turns on the lamp. The light is pale and hollow.  
She goes into the nursery again. She looks down at NO. He looks at her, sunny and unsuspecting.

Valentin and Dagmara come home.  
DAGMARA: “I hope that he didn’t give you any trouble.”  
URSULA laughs, then clears her throat. URSULA: “None at all.”  
DAGMARA: “Why don’t you let me make you lunch tomorrow, here, to thank you? You don’t have any plans, do you?”  
URSULA: “No, none at all. That would be lovely.”

Ursula and Dagmara sit at the edge of the bed, clothes askew.  
URSULA: “I still think that NO is stupid-”  
Dagmara gives her a look of betrayal and hurt.  
URSULA: “The idea of NO is stupid. It’s a rag doll, and I don’t know why you and Valentin are pretending otherwise.”  
DAGMARA: “I don’t know why you feel that way.”  
URSULA: “I feel that way because it’s true. But I’m willing to put aside my feelings, because this is important to you.”  
DAGMARA: “That’s the best I’m going to get, isn’t it?”  
URSULA: “Take it, or leave it.”  
DAGMARA: “Well, I guess, I’ll take it.”  
URSULA: “Good.”  
Ursula kisses Dagmara, Dagmara’s arms wound around Ursula’s neck. They lie down again.

Valentin pushes the stroller, as he walks arm-in-arm-in-arm with Dagmara and Ursula.  
A stranger looks into the stroller.  
STRANGER (voice over): Oh. What- what is it?  
VALENTIN (voice over): He’s our son and heir.

TITLE CARD: OUR SON AND HEIR

See the family standing together, looking directly at us, in a silent tableau: Valentin and Dagmara sitting, Dagmara holding NO in her arms, Ursula standing behind them. They continue to look directly at us as the screen fades to black.


End file.
